Earth: Your Fragile Planet

Earth wasn’t given to us by our parents; she was loaned to us by our children.

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Sea Stacks

Located in southern Iceland, Reynisdrangar, a tri-rock formation of 60-meter-high basalt sea stacks, has quite the folkloric backstory. According to the legend, some years ago, three trolls named Skessudrangur, Laddrangur, and Langhamar (try reciting those names three times in a row!) were pulling a three-masted ship into shore, when they were caught at dawn by sunlight and turned into rocks.

Corpse Flower

"A mammal decomposing" and "a dead body lying in Florida for two weeks." These are just two ways the corpse flower, the world's largest flower, has been described in recent days following the blooming of an eight-foot-tall, 200-pound specimen last week in Belgium's National Botanic Garden. The rancid odor is actually a survival trait. Insects that feed on raw meat are attracted to it, and this serves to pollinate the flower. The flower—which goes by the official name of titan arum, or amorphophallus titanium (literally, misshapen phallus)—is such a draw that officials in Belgium have set up a live-feed. 'Cuz, you know, second only to watching grass grow, there's nothing more riveting to do on the Internet than watch a rank-smelling flower stink up a greenhouse.

Photo: National Botanic Garden of Belgium

Delta Delta Awesome

A dried-up delta in Kimberly, Australia, is seen in this undated photograph taken from a helicopter. "Creates the most sophisticated patterns only appreciated from above," writes photographer Ten Grambeau. River deltas are formed when sediment carried downstream leaves the mouth of the waterway.

Eye of the Beholder

The eye of an underground monster. Some sort of oval-shaped jellyfish that got stuck on land. A portal into another dimension. These were the first three thoughts that came to mind when I saw this luminescent orb. Turns out, it's actually the famed Strokkur Fountain Geyser, located in Iceland. Photographer Sverrir Thorolfsson timed his snapshot just right, capturing the superheated water moments before it erupted—which happens every four to eight minutes.

Roll Out

A roll cloud streaks above Maldonado, Uruguay’s Las Olas Beach in January 2009. Very long, extremely rare, and usually harmless, roll clouds are a type of arcus cloud that typically forms when up- or downdrafts agitate the front edge of an impending storm. The result, also known as a Morning Glory, is a tube-like cloud that looks like a tornado that’s been kicked on its side.

Photo: Daniela Mirner Eberl/NASA

Forest Couch

Welcome to Forest Couch. The first rule of Forest Couch: You do not talk about Forest Couch. The second rule: You do not talk about Forest Couch. Okay, I'm done—I promise. The couch is located in Pena Park, an area that encircles Portugal's Pena Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site. As the story goes, the late great King Ferdinand II ordered trees and animals from distant lands to enrich and populate the environs of his sprawling castle. Apparently, Ferny didn't care about invasive species, but given that it was the 1800s and the term probably wasn't even invented, I'm gonna give him a posthumous pardon. Today the park is home to white and black swans, winding paths, waterfalls, and rare flower species. Oh, and it's also home to Forest Couch. Lest you forget, the final rule of Forest Couch: If this is your first time at Forest Couch, you have to nap.

Gushing

No, this isn't some freakazoid sandstorm sweeping across the arid lands of Arizona on its way to swallowing the lovely city of Phoenix, although if you had guessed that, you wouldn't have been that far off. It's actually a sand-washing operation at the base of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir, on China's Yellow River, the country's second-longest. Each year the reservoir gets clogged with soot and sediment carried downstream by the river, so officials need to clean the dam's pipes. But they can't just use Drain-O; instead, they discharge water at a volume of 2,600 cubic meters per second.

Photo: China Daily/Reuters

The Algae Avenger

A swimmer wears a mask in algae-covered seawater on July 5, 2013, in Qingdao, China. This week more than 40,000 tons of the non-poisonous green seaweed enteromorpha prolifera were removed from the coast of Qingdao and neighboring cities in Shandong province by officials who were worried that 80,000 pounds of green slime might drastically cut into tourism.

Photo: Hong Wu/Getty Images

Cosmic Swirl

As someone who goes out of his way to avoid the bitter cold at all costs, I don't fancy ever travelling far north enough to gawk at the strange beauty that is aurora borealis, or northern lights. And that's a shame, because of all the seven natural wonders of the world, it might be the most head-scratching (all due respect, of course, to the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef). Its Crayola-esque colors are the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with particles released from the sun. This particular photograph was snapped in Lyngen Fjord, Norway. One parting fact: In the Southern Hemisphere, the phenomena is known as "aurora australis."

CSI: Czech Republic

Tape that reads “Forest Crime Scene” is placed around Wenge wood by Greenpeace in Horni Pocaply, the Czech Republic, on July 1, 2013. The environmental group says that the wood was illegally harvested from the Democratic Republic of Congo by controversial Swiss-German timber group Danzer. In May the Forest Stewardship Council, the global certification system responsible for forest management, effectively severed all ties with Danzer after Greenpeace said that the company was involved in human rights violations in the Congo, as well as in illegal logging operations.

Photo by Matej Divizna/Getty Images

Unnatural Disaster

On May 29, 2013, former residents of Sidoarjo village, which was once located on Indonesia's eastern Java Island, dramatize their suffering during a protest marking the seventh anniversary of the mudslide that permanently buried every home in Sidoarjo and 12 other villages. Experts believe the gas drilling company Lapindo Brantas, controlled by the family of powerful Indonesian tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, was responsible for the disaster. In addition to the 13,000 families directly affected and covered by the compensation scheme, many thousands of local residents are demanding payment for economic damage.

Photo: Juni Kriswanto/AFP/Getty Images

Going, Going...Extinct?

Firmly entrenched at the intersection of land and sea, mangrove trees are vital to human survival for two big reasons. First, in acting as natural barriers, they protect those of us who (foolishly?) live near the coasts from hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, and tidal waves. And these sea trees also do a dang good job at carbon sequestration. “Mangroves can hold carbon in place for hundreds of years. Most inland forests only hold carbon for about 50 years,” said Alfredo Quarto, executive director of the Mangrove Action Project, in January 2013. But, because of overdevelopment and the shrimping industry, the world’s mangrove forests are in retreat, dying off in unprecedented numbers—20 percent have perished since 1980, leaving only about 150,000 square kilometers of them left on the entire planet. That’s a spit of land about as big as Illinois.

Photo: Ralf Reeger/2013 National Geographic Photograph Contest

Simply Grand

Yellowstone National Park is home to more than 10,000 geothermal wonders—springs, mudspots, fumaroles, and geysers of all shapes and sizes. But none are as colorful or otherworldly as the Grand Prismatic Spring. At 370-feet across, it’s the third-largest hot spring on the planet. This seems like plenty enough space to make a run at shattering the world record for most people in a hot spring at the same time. Problem is, you and your fellow world record hopefuls would be treated to Dante's Inferno-esque water: The average temperature of the spring is 167 degrees. Hrumph.

Photo: Jie Zhao 2013 National Geographic Photograph Contest

Gorge-us

Known for its sheer gorges, waterfalls, and shimmering swimming holes, Australia's Karijini National Park is, to be sure, a backpacking utopia of the first order. Perhaps the most idyllic—and photographed—section of the park is Hammersley Gorge (seen above), famed for its dramatic rock-colorings and no doubt vertigo-inducing hikes. "The park is all about exploring serpentine tunnels of marbled rock, clambering over boulders, squeezing through narrow tunnels, inching your way along ledges, paddling through subterranean waterways and descending deep into chasms which have been eroded into the landscape over two billion years," writes Ignacio Palacios, in this pic submitted to the 2012 National Geographic Photography Contest.

Photo: Ignacio Palacios/2013 National Geographic Photograph Contest

Arboreal Artistry

Today, June 25, 2013, British environmental activist Sharon Johnson is painting branches for an eco-art installation called Blue Trees in London, which aims to highlight the importance of urban forestry. To answer your first question, no, the trees in the installation are not at all being harmed; Johnson says that the paint will wash off in a few months. As for your second question—Just how much good can urban trees do?—well, a new study sheds some light. By scrubbing air of fine particulate pollution—soot, smoke, and dust—urban forests "help save one or more people from dying every year in each of 10 major cities studied," reports Grist.

Photo: Justin Tallis/Getty Images

Defaced

Rocks and cliffs are covered with graffiti near Sapphire Falls, in California's Cucamonga Canyon, on June 23, 2013. In response to the rampant graffiti problem that has plagued the Angeles National Forest in recent weeks, the city of Rancho Cucamonga is denying access through non-national forest land. Spray-painters, if caught, will be issued $250 citations. The illegal doodling has gotten so out of hand that officials have closed the historic Barker Dam and the popular Rattlesnake Canyon hiking area of the Wonderland of Rocks in Joshua Tree National Park.

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

Motorcycle Diaries

Villagers ride a motorcycle through a smoky haze that's hit Dumai, in Indonesia's Riau province. Fires raging in Indonesia have blanketed the country and its neighbors in a thick, ground-level smoke and haze. Hospitals in the Riau province recorded increases in cases of asthma, lung, eye and skin problems, said health official Arifin Zainal. Free face masks are being distributed and authorities have advised residents to stay indoors with their windows shut.

Photo: Beawiharta/Reuters

The God of Extremes

A submerged statue of the Hindu Lord Shiva stands along the flooded river Ganges at Rishikesh in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. India's longest river has swollen with early monsoon rains, which have swept away houses, killing at least 60 people and leaving tens of thousands stranded.

Photo: Stringer/Reuters

River Run

In the Indian city of Ahmedabad, young boys row through the polluted waters of the Sabarmati river. They’re retrieving coconuts, thrown in as offerings by locals after the immersion of idols of the Hindu elephant god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity.

Photo: Amit Dave/Reuters

Deathwatch for a Nation

North and South Tarawa are seen from the air in the central Pacific Island nation of Kiribati on May 23, 2013. Kiribati consists of a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just meters above sea level, spread over a huge expanse of otherwise empty ocean. With surrounding sea levels rising, Kiribati President Anote Tong has predicted his country will likely become uninhabitable in 30 to 60 years because of inundation and contamination of its freshwater supplies. (Photo: David Gray/Reuters)

A Breathtaking View

A hotel guest swims in the pool of the Marina Bay Sands Skypark overlooking the haze-covered skyline of Singapore on June 17, 2013. The haze worsened on Monday with the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hitting 105 at 3 p.m., according to local media.

Photo: Reuters Pictures

The Aftermath

Pictured is the aftermath of the Black Forest Fire in Black Forest, Colorado. Hundreds of firefighters worked to stop the blaze, which had already destroyed some 360 homes, from roaring into the outskirts of Colorado Springs after it billowed overnight into the most destructive fire in state history.

Photo: Rick Wilking/Reuters

The Last Stand

A woman stands on top of a rock holding a fish her husband just caught in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Consisting of a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just meters above sea level, Kiribati is spread out over a vast expanse of an otherwise empty ocean. With surrounding sea levels rising, the nation's president, Anote Tong, has predicted his country will likely become uninhabitable in 30 to 60 years because of inundation and contamination of its freshwater supplies.

Photo: David Gray/Reuters

Salt Of The Earth

A man walks on sulfur and mineral salt formations near Dallol in the Danakil Depression in northern Ethiopia. One of the hottest and harshest environments on Earth, the average annual temperature of the basin is 94 degrees Fahrenheit. For centuries, merchants in camel caravans have travelled there to collect salt from the surface. They then transport it back across the desert so that it can be sold around the country.

Photo: Siegfried Modola/Reuters

The Getaway

In an eastern Bavarian city, a car drives away from a small settlement almost completely submerged by flood waters from the Danube river. The disaster—Germany’s worst flood in a decade—has taken the lives of 12 people across central Europe.

Photo: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

Hunting For Treasure

At the Nom Son garbage dump outside of Hanoi, scavengers search for recyclable materials to sell to recycling centers. Each morning, close to 800 people sift through the dump site during pre-dawn hours. Most earn the equivalent of $4 to $5 a day, in exchange for more than 10 tons of salvaged recyclables.

Established in 1999, Nom Son, which takes in close to 4,200 tons of garbage daily, is nearing 90 percent of its capacity. If it's not permitted to expand its operation, the facility will have to close next year.

Photo: Kham/Reuters

Lightning Strikes Twice

Lightning strikes down on Cushing, Oklahoma, during a tornadic thunderstorm on May 31, 2013. The storm came just 11 days after an EF5 twister hit nearby Moore, Oklahoma, which the National Weather Service reported had a width of 2.6 miles and winds that reached 300 mph.

Photo: Gene Blevins/Reuters

How do you say ‘Rolling down the river’ in German?

Mother Nature is showing her wrath in Central Europe this week. Massive floods are inundating parts of Poland, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel toured the devastated town of Passau by air this morning. Here, people in the small Austrian city of Steyr stand next to a bridge and watch the town's river on June 2, 2013. During heavy rain, rivers burst their banks, flooding parts of Tyrol, Salzburg, and lower and upper Austria. (Photo: Leonhard Foege/Reuters)

An aerial photograph shows the construction site of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam at Pimental, near Altamira in Para State, November 15, 2012. After years of gains against destruction of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil appears to be suffering from an increase in deforestation as farmers, loggers, miners and builders move into previously untouched woodland, according to data compiled by the government and independent researchers. (Photo: Reuters)

Striped

No, this iceberg is not a fake—though it sure does look like a Photoshopped fraud, doesn't it? While no one knows for sure what happened, the stripes most likely came about when the ice melted, and then rolled down a mountain to the sea. The brown, black, and yellow lines are layers of collected sediment. The photograph was snapped in March 2008 by Norwegian sailor Oyvind Tangen, who was in the right place at the right time some 660 miles north of the Antarctic. "It reminds me of striped candy I bought as a child," said 62-year-old Mr Tangen, to the Daily Mail.

Photo: Oyvind Tangen/Courtesy The Daily Mail

Life Finds a Way

A firefighter prepares to extinguish smoldering grass on May 28, 2013, in the hills north of Santa Barbara, California. Somehow, someway, this lonely tree found a way to duck and dodge the flames. The blaze, which is now 80 percent contained, has burned more than 1,800 acres since Monday, May 27. Last year, the U.S. experienced its third worst fire season ever, with 9.2 million acres burned. On average, wildfires now burn twice as much total land each year as they did 40 years ago, and the burn season is almost three months longer than in the 1970s.

Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

Spotlight to Middle Earth

Located underneath Bonito, Brazil, the famed Anhumas Abyss is a 236-foot-tall cave known for its chilly waters, snorkeling opportunities, and the stunning shafts of light that pierce the surface of the underground like a movie premiere spotlight. But be warned, acrophobics: The cave is only accessible via rope. "When the sunlight comes down by the gap, it reflects the colors green and blue from the magnezium (sic) and limestone in the cavern rocks," writes photographer Kedson Silviera, in his undated submission to the 2013 National Geography Photograph Contest.

Photo: Kedson Silviera/2013 National Geography Photograph Contest

World's Worst Bubble Bath?

Men bathe in an industrial waste-foam polluted section of the Yamuna River, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India on May 24, 2013. The river, holy to Hindus, traverses various urban centers like Delhi, Mathura, and Agra. These highly-populated megalopolises draw fresh water from the river and, in turn, disgorge almost one hundred percent of their liquid waste into its meandering coffers. The foam is most likely created when the fresh water mixes with phosphate and phosphorous, two ingredients found in industrial detergent. The photo is a stark reminder that, globally, 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water.

Photo: Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images

Zapped

Lightning flashes in the sky above Zhuhai, China, on May 22, 2013. Heavy rainfall over the last week has killed two people in the country's Guangdong Province, bringing the death toll from rainstorms to 36 this year. The occasional bolt of lightning is the least of China's ecological problems. See the story about 3,000 dead pigs floating in a river. Or this one about a 1,000-foot skyscraper that managed to somehow disappear behind the country's seemingly omnipresent smog.

Photo: Reuters/Stringer

House Rock

A house sits on a rock on the Drina River in the Serbian town of Bajina Basta, about 100 miles from Belgrade, on May 22, 2013. The house was built in 1968 by a group of young men who decided that the rock on a river was an ideal place for a tiny shelter—that, or it was one of the very first entries into the now booming tiny house movement.

Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Shredded

An American flag covers an overturned car after a tornado grinded through Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013. The two-mile-wide twister, which was on the ground for 40 minutes, tore through the Oklahoma City suburb, killing a confirmed 24 people, including nine children, while destroying entire tracts of homes and piling cars atop one another. It was the deadliest U.S. tornado since one killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago. “It was just like the movie Twister,” said a survivor to CNN. “There were horses and stuff flying around everywhere.”

Photo: Gene Blevins/Reuters

Door to Hell

A woman stands on the lip of the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan. Known as the Door to Hell, the hole is 20 meters deep and 60 meters wide. While the crater is fueled by natural gas preserves tucked away just beneath the surface—it's been on fire for the last 38 years—its origin is not natural. It exists as the result of a Soviet gas exploration accident that occurred in 1971.

Photo: Priscilla Locke/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest

Blood Falls

Geologists first discovered this 50-foot-tall, blood-red “waterfall” in 1911 in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Their first inclination was that the crimson color came from algae, but Mother Nature had a different, far cooler reason in mind—a time capsule. Let us explain: Two million years ago, microbes were sealed in a lake below the surface of the glacier. No light, no oxygen, nothing was let in. And the lake is not only high in salinity, but also rich in iron, which oozes out through tiny cracks in the ice, thereby giving the waterfall its ominous color.

Photo: Courtesy U.S. Antarctic Program Photo Library

Holy Lava

Lava spewed from a crater of Mount Etna, located in the southern Italian island of Sicily, on July 30, 2011. Despite flowing into the valley, the lava was no danger to inhabited areas. At 10,810 feet, Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe. Most recently, the volcano erupted in late April 2013—the 13th such time it spewed its red-hot molten insides in 2013 alone. As with the 2011 eruption, this last one was no risk to locals.

Photo: Marcello Paternostro/Reuters

Coaster Cleanup

On May 14, 2013, a large crane demolishes the JetStar roller coaster off Seaside Heights, New Jersey. The wrecked coaster rested in the ocean for six months after becoming detached from the Casino Pier, which collapsed when Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Jersey Shore in October 2012. Half a year later, the wrath of steroidstorm Sandy is still hard to fathom: $75 billion in damages, millions left without power, hundreds of thousands evacuated, and over 285 U.S. deaths.

Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Get It While You Can

People line up to collect water at Yazarthingyan Lake, in southern Burma, on May 12, 2013. Because the town of Yangon is located near the sea, the only source of freshwater available is from inland lakes, which have all dried up—except for Yazarthingyan, that is. According to authorities, the lake is only open to locals once every three days, from 4 PM to 5 PM, when over 1,000 people line up to collect water. Around the world, more than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water.

Photo: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

That Sinking Feeling

A massive sinkhole swallows a home in Lake County, California, about 100 miles outside of San Francisco. To date, eight homes have sunk, with local officials putting 10 more on notice. “It’s a slow-motion disaster,” said Randall Fitzgerald, who lives in Lakeside Heights, to the Associated Press. The situation is so bad that mail delivery has been suspended.

Unlike Florida sinkholes, which can be deadly at moment's notice, a sinkhole in this hilly volcanic region of California can move a few feet in one day and just inches the next, according to the AP. To date, state officials do not know what's causing the sinking.

Photo: Fox News

Mother Nature's Palette

Salt collectors gather salt from pools of mineral-colored water on the Senegalese coastline near the border with Gambia on June 12, 2006. Women collect salt by hand into 110-pound sacks, which sell for about just under $2. The sacks are then traded with neighboring Mauritania, where salt is mainly used for preserving fish and meat in areas that don't have access to electricity.

Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

Backfire

Firefighters set backfires that burn off dry brush to protect homes behind a hillside threatened by an out-of-control wildfire on May 2, 2013, in Newbury Park, California. Hundreds of firefighters battled wind and dry conditions as over 28,000 acres burned northwest of Los Angeles. By May 5, the fire was 75 percent contained. As for the cause? Well, that remains under investigation, but officials believed that it was started by a small roadside ignition of grass, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Soy Bean Farming Fallout

The Veu de Noiva waterfall is seen in Chapada dos Guimaraes national park, Mato Grosso state, western Brazil on January 30, 2011. The neighboring Pantanal area, a sanctuary of biodiversity, is presently at risk because of the intensive culture of soybean and the deforestation, local scientists said.

(Photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

Spring Snow

A couple walks along a path bordered by three-meter-high snow drifts on Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 6, 2013. Though the lower mainland of British Columbia has been enjoying summer temperatures, the local mountains still have plenty of snow. If April showers bring May flowers, what do May snowstorms bring? Probably lots of flooding, unfortunately. Look out, Seattle.

Photo: Andy Clark/Reuters

Calved

Tourists stare at the Perito Moreno glacier after the rupture of a massive ice wall near the city of El Calafate, in southern Argentina, on March 4, 2012. The glacier, a massive tongue of ice in the Santa Cruz province, which covers 97 square miles, advances yearly into a lake, known as Lago Argentino. As Perito Moreno moves inland, it cuts off a river feeding the lake. Water builds up pressure and slowly undermines the ice, forming a tunnel until the ice eventually comes tumbling down. The phenomenon repeats itself at irregular intervals, with the last major ice falls occurring in 2008.

Photo: Andres Arce/Reuters

Fire on the Beach

The Springs Fire in California is just north of the Ventura County Line. The wind-driven wildfire prompted the evacuation of hundreds of homes this week as flames enveloped several farm buildings and vehicles near threatened neighborhoods.

Photo: Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters

Dragon's Blood Tree

The island of Socotra, located some 220 miles southeast from Yemen, is home to some of the planet's most alien-looking plants and animals. Chief among these head-tilting natural wonders is the Dragon's Blood tree. The tree, which is only found on Socotra, produces a red sap, hence its name. For thousands of years, the sap has been used by locals as a dye and as a medicine. In 2008, Socotra was recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a World Natural Heritage site because of its ecological diversity.

Photo: worldsupertravel.com

Algae Excavation

A fisherman uses a pitchfork to clean up green algae that covered a beach in Oingdao, China, on July 5, 2011. This particular bloom, also known as green tide, clogged nearly 7,700 square miles of China's Yellow Sea. While the algae is not poisonous—even with the unpleasant odor it leaves on the beaches—blooms can ravage underwater ecosystems because they consume large quantities of oxygen, creating "dead zones" and thereby suffocating marine life.

Photo: ChinaFotoPress/Reuters

Palmed Off

A cleared forest area under development for palm oil plantations in Indonesia's central Kalimantan province is photographed from above on July 6, 2010. The aerial shot was taken as part of a media trip organized by Greenpeace, which has campaigned against palm oil expansion in forested areas in Indonesia. Almost 90 percent of the palm oil sold around the world comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. Since 1990, 6,200 square miles of rainforests and peat lands have been cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, a clear-cutting that has pushed Sumatran tigers and orangutans to the brink of extinction.

Photo: Crack Palinggi/Reuters

Operation Icebridge

Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord are photographed during an Operation Icebridge survey flight in April 2013. IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice, as they continue to vanish because of global warming.

Photo: Michael Studinger/NASA/Reuters

Rainbow Eucalyptus Trees

Yeah, yeah—we know what you're thinking: This image of a rainbow eucalyptus tree, snapped in Maui, Hawaii, is a fake. A gem of a Photoshopped image. Thing is, though, it's real. The painted phenomenon occurs, simply, when patches of back peel off over time. Recently shed bark reveals bright green tree layers. Over time, the elements change these into blues and purples, and eventually into oranges and reds.

Photo: Amusing Planet

Lucky Falls

Tourists stand on a walkway extending from the Brazilian bank of the Iguacu River to observe the Iguacu Falls in the Foz do Iguacu on March 22, 2008. The waterfalls have been depicted in several films, most notably Roland Joffe's The Mission and Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Photo: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

Wanted: Dry Land

A rubber glove being used as a marker bobs in the water after flooding in Fox Lake, Illinois, on April 22, 2013. The Fox River, a tributary of the Illinois River, is expected to crest today, April 23, after heavy rains brought flooding to the area last week. The high water is being blamed for three deaths, including a 12-year-old boy.

Since the Great Flood of 1993, the Mississippi River's flood plains have been turned into green spaces as thousands of homes have been bought out and emptied in an attempt to mitigate loss of life and property damages.

Photo: Jim Young/Reuters

RE: The Third Rock From the Sun

Seven million. That's the number of Earthlings added to our lovely planet each month, give or take. This staggering growth rate shines a very large, very bright spotlight on our spinning blue marble's very limited resources, namely food, water, and energy. For example, will there be enough to go around come 2100? Maybe, but only if we go all in right now on the renewable principles that will ensure a sustainable future. More solar panels and wind turbines, fewer oil derricks and coal plants. More rooftop gardens, less XL pipelines. More politicians willing to actually make an honest-to-goodness push for meaningful climate change legislation, fewer lawmakers who say they will, but probably don't really mean it. And, yes, that includes the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And so, on Earth Day 2013, ask yourself one question: What are you doing—or, more aptly, what should you be doing—to ensure that the only planet we're ever likely to call home will be inhabitable for your children and their children?

Photo: Imagecore Ltd/Getty Images

Suburban Waterfall

This winter 58-year-old Wen Hsu was worried the uninsulated water pipes running through his apartment building in Jilin Provice, China, would freeze. But instead of simply running the water once a day, or say, once every 12 hours, he went to the extreme—leaving his tap on for months and diverting the warm water flow down the side of the building. Eventually, the water froze during the region's recent cold spell.

Now the building is scheduled for demolition by a private developer who intends to use the land to build a shopping center. "They want me to move, but what they were offering was not enough for me to get another place so I'm refusing to leave," said Wen Hsu, to local media. There's no telling just how many gallons of water were wasted, but given the world water crisis—globally, 1.1 billion people don't have access to safe, clean drinking water—even a single drop is a liquid tragedy.

Photo: Via io9

A Tree in the Tire Forest

In a picture taken on April 16, 2013, a tree grows among thousands of tons of used tires left in an abandoned ten-hectare recycling installation in Lachapelle-Auzac, France. The company recycling these used tires closed in 2004 after being placed in receivership. Nine years later, amid all this rubbery rubbish, life still finds a way.

Photo: AFP Photo/Eric Cabanis/Getty Images

Cool Globes

A man on a scooter checks out giant globes that are on display outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, on April 17, 2013. The globes exhibit, an initiative of the nonprofit organization Cool Globes, which aims to raise awareness of climate change, will be on display through the summer. "I was intrigued by the question of how to capture the public's attention on a subject as complex as global warming," writes Wendy Abrams, the founder of Cool Globes, on the organization's website. "One night, in a casual discussion with friends, we came up with an idea—'public art with a purpose.' The idea was to put sculptures on the sidewalk, each depicting a solution to global warming, forcing people to confront the issue, but in a non-threatening manner."

Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Simply Splendid

After heavy rain in August 2011, a fresh-water stream flows into a waterfall that cascades over a cliff and into the North Sea at Crawton in Aberdeenshire, on the east coast of Scotland. Once a thriving fishing village, Crawton has been deserted since 1927 because of overfishing.

Photo: David Hirst/Flickr Vision/Getty Images

Double Trouble

A Chinese vessel sits stuck, having run aground on a protected coral reef on April 8 at the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage sight southwest of the Philippines. When officials boarded the ship, they found 20,000 pounds of meat from a protected species—the pangolin, or scaly anteater. "It is bad enough that the Chinese have illegally entered our seas, navigated without boat papers and crashed recklessly into a national marine park and World Heritage Site," said WWF-Philippines chief executive officer Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, to Yahoo News. "It is simply deplorable that they appear to be posing as fishermen to trade in illegal wildlife."

Photo: Naval Forces West Handout/Reuters

In a Word: Awful

A soybean farming area in the outskirts of Vilhena is photographed in September 2009 as existing within the 'Legal Amazon,' a name given to an area originally covered by a portion of the Brazilian rainforest. According to a new report, beef and soy are the two main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon. Shockingly, a total of 2.7 billion tons of CO2—or 30 percent of the carbon emissions associated with deforestation in the last decade—were exported from Brazil. Of this, 29 percent were due to soybean production and 71 percent due to cattle ranching.

Photo: Rodrigo Baleia/Getty Images

In Bloom

A trailer full of visitors is towed around a field of Giant Tecolote Ranunculus flowers by a tractor as laborers work at the Flower Fields in Carlsbad, California, on April 10, 2013. The flowers are sold for commercial purposes and the fields are a big tourist attraction, with approximately 125,000 people visiting the facility's 50 acres of flowers each year.

Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters

Emperor Bomb

On August 23, 2012, large chunks of ice and debris calve off of the Moshniy Glacier located on Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean located north of Russia. During the height of the Cold War, Novaya Zemlya was known as a secret military area where the most powerful nuclear device in history, a 50 megaton Soviet hydrogen bomb named "Emperor Bomb," was detonated. Now glaciers in the area are being studied because the duration of open water has increased annually due to the decrease in sea ice because of global warming.

Photo: DigitalGlobe via Getty Images

The Inevitibality of Solar Power

A boy witnesses a solar eclipse as the sun sets over Albuquerque, New Mexico, on May 20, 2012. Only one percent of the total U.S. electricity output is solar, despite two head-scratching facts—one, solar energy is free; and two, enough sunlight hits the Earth in 40 minutes (that’s an episode of Lost, minus commercials) to power us for an entire year. If recent polls are to be believed, it looks as if more and more Americans are finally warming up to the fact that the sun is an inexhaustible fuel source that should be powering their iPads, their Walkmen, and their George Foreman grills. What's more, solar companies are now a fixture at home improvement shows. Another recent report shows that rooftop solar is already cheaper than grid power in over ten percent of the market in five states—California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. That trend is projected to spread among 49 states by 2022.

Photo: Colleen Pinski/Colorado/Smithsonian.com

Bone-fied Cyclist

A skeleton riding a bicycle is displayed to demand more safety to users of the individual transport system Ecobici at the Alameda Ecobici station along Juarez Avenue, in Mexico City, on April 5, 2013. According to the Ministry of Environment of the Federal District, more than 45,000 people are using the bike-sharing system, which looks for an alternative to reduce the pollution in one of the more crowded cities around the world. Launched in 2010, Ecobici will soon be available to tourists, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported:"Once considered a crime-ridden, polluted and congested city that tourists loved to miss, it has become one of the country's safer and more tourist-friendly destinations, reporting a 9 percent increase in North American tourists in 2012."

Photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images

Rooftop Veggie Patch

Mickael Toublant, gardener for French chef Alain Passard, checks vegetables on a 150-square-meter garden installed on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo museum near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, on April 5, 2013. The temporary rooftop garden is a creation by three-star Michelin chef Passard, who specializes in vegetable cuisine.

Photo: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

Water, Water, Everywhere

Heavy rains flooded a large part of La Plata, Argentina, on April 3, 2013. At least 46 people were killed after a torrential downpour battered the eastern city and forced some 2,200 people to flee their homes in search of dry ground. The government has declared three days of national mourning after what it called "an unprecedented catastrophe." Speaking to the BBC about the speed with which the waters rose, Daniel Scioli, the governor of La Plata province, said: "People were taken by surprise, and some didn't have time to escape this deadly trap."

Photo: Infobae.com/Handout/Reuters

Wall of Fire

A forest fire spreads in southern Brazil on March 27, 2013. The fire, which started on Tuesday, March 26, in Rio Grande del Sul, had reached approximately 1,400 acres by late last week. The risk of spreading is severe, since there is no way to reach the place by water or land. To date, government officials do not know what caused the fire.

Photo: Lauro Alves/AFP /Getty Images

Don’t Look Down

A young girl looks at the Salto del Nervion waterfall, near Osma, in the province of Burgos, Spain, on March 30, 2013. The Salto del Nervion is the highest waterfall in the country, and it originates from three seasonal streams: Iturrigutxi, Ajiturri and Urita. The waterfall forms from temporary runoff following heavy rainfall.

Photo: Cesar Manso/AFP/Getty Images

Gone Forever

Some of the hundreds of totally destroyed homes are seen in the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 28, 2012. Cooler temperatures and lighter winds helped firefighters battle the fire, which had destroyed hundreds of homes and forced more than 35,000 people to flee.

Photo: Rick Wilking/ Reuters

A Walk on the Trash Side

Two girls and a few cows (in the background) stand at a garbage disposal site filled with waste near the southern Yemeni province of Taiz, on March 31, 2013.

Photo: Mohamed al-Sayaghi/ Reuters

Fishing Time

A fisherman holds his fishing net in his mouth in a polluted river in Wuhan, Hubei province, on June 21, 2011. More than half of China's cities are affected by acid rain, and one-sixth of major rivers are so polluted the water is unfit even for farmland, a senior official said in a bleak assessment of the environmental price of the country's economic boom.

Photo: Darley Wong/Reuters

No Mas Smog

Pollution hovers over the eastern sector of Santiago, Chile, on July 30, 1999. The pollution hangs in striking contrast to the snowcapped Andes Mountains in the background. Local authorities have long battled high levels of pollution in the Chilean capital, home to 5.5 million people.

Photo: Macarena Minguell/Getty Images

Fashion Mask

On November 20, 2012, a model wears a face mask during the Toxic Threads—The Big Fashion Stitch-Up fashion parade in Beijing, China, which is organized by environment action group Greenpeace to highlight chemical contamination in the fashion industry. Greenpeace released the results of a months-long global investigation into some of the world’s top-selling fast fashion houses. According to Greenpeace, nearly two-thirds of the clothing tested positive for hormone-disrupting and dyes that release cancer-causing substances.

Photo: Mark Ralston/Getty Images

No Swimming Today

From the banks of the San Juan river in Manila, one can gaze at the seemingly endless flow of garbage, as this man did while holding his daughter on January 11, 2013.

Photo: Jay Directo/Getty Images

Long Beach Smog

On April 23, 2001, toxic smoke blew over downtown Long Beach, California. The Tosco oil refinery in nearby Carson was running at full capacity, around 125,000 barrels of oil per day, when a blaze broke out in the ''coker'' unit, where petroleum coke is burned in the making of gasoline.

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

The Jersey Sludge

An electrical tower is reflected in a puddle on April 8, 2001, in northern New Jersey. At the time, the Bush administration came under attack from environmental groups, liberals, and moderate Republicans for cuts to the EPA and the pullout from the international Kyoto protocol.

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